Projects

How, through the gestures, objects and images we create, do we represent our own, and another’s emotional states, display care for each other through that ability, while also inventing new ways to empathize in our own moment and through time?

WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden, instances of hacking, digital warfare, software glitches at Nasdaq, the role of social media in recent revolutions and wars in the Middle East, and the fragility of the systems on which we depend.

People who cross a border, or break through a barrier, often feel that they carry the other side within them—as one lived reality nested inside another. Selected poems from Sudanese-American author Safia Elhillo capture the poignant complexities of this condition.

Aaron Gemmill has spent years photographing the proliferation of luxury condominiums, mostly in Brooklyn, NY. His project is a selection of these photos (which Gemmill originally posted to Instagram under the hashtag “#condoreport) and his prints of the Plexiglas windowpanes used to give passersby a glimpse into construction sites.

What such water goods reveal—only to persons close enough to smell the clinging dregs of seaweed or willing to caress the faux-leather handbag tucked into a cellophane sleeve—are the sentient negotiations of supple conquest.

In August 2017, I was a passenger—a “supernumerary,” in shipping lingo—aboard a cargo ship that sailed the North Sea’s perimeter before crossing the Atlantic Ocean: Le Havre to Antwerp to Rotterdam to Bremerhaven and over Scotland to Charleston, South Carolina. These photographs and notes document the journey.